Crispin Hull

Skills shortage plea is a sham

It is just plain silly to continue doing something over and over again and hoping that the result will be different. Einstein reputedly said it was the definition of insanity.

So why then, for more than 20 years, have Australian Governments thought that the solution to “skills shortages” has been to ramp up immigration. It began in 1999 when the Howard Government more than doubled immigration from around 70,000 to 160,000 or 200,000 a year to meet “skills shortages”. And still, 23 years later, we l have “skills shortages”.

Can Teals make tax & gender sense?

The Liberal Party is spiralling into irrelevance. Labor and the Greens are not connecting the dots. The Nationals are looking after their own as they always do. So maybe the Teals can connect the big policy dots that stand before us: health, education, childcare, tax, immigration, and rorts.

And underlying those six Big Ticket Items are two more Big Ticket Items: gender fairness and intergenerational fairness.

Taiwan not worth a mushroom cloud

The odd thing about the visit by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives to Taiwan was that it was done by a woman, Nancy Pelosi. Usually, women in government tend to be the negotiators and compromisers, not the aggressors and agitators.

Why not just leave well alone?

Big 3 issues: something better than nothing

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice is getting opposition from two fronts: those – mainly Green-left – who say it does not go far enough and those – mainly conservative, monarchist, British traditionalists – who say there is not enough detail.

Those critics have a point, up to a point, but now that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has set the referendum process in motion it is critical for our nation’s well-being that the Voice be passed.

Tribute to my mentor

Last week a memorial gathering was held for Michael Travis, who was Chief Sub-Editor of The Canberra Times for 20 years. He was Chief Sub-Editor when I was appointed a cadet journalist in September 1972.

My eulogy follows:

PM: call the Greens’ bluff

The Greens are behaving like the National Party – again. They are threatening to side with the Liberal Party to defeat sensible climate policy in Australia.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese should call the bluff. Electoral arithmetic is on his side.

You’d be nuts to buy new fossil car

The ACT Government this week did a big favour to its citizens, and probably Australians in generally, by announcing that it would not permit the sale of fossil-fuel cars and small trucks after 2035.

Presumably, that means that no new ones bought interstate after that date would be able to be registered in the ACT.

Bad pizza triumph of bad week

The pizza was the triumph of the week. Salami, zucchini, Chinese mushrooms, a best-before-expired can of tomatoes and an assortment of left-over cheeses, none of them parmesan or mozzarella. It was the fifth day of isolation.

The week, as a whole though, was far from a triumph.

God bothering fewer Australians

Christian church leaders, elders, and others have been in damage control since the census figures came out last week showing Christianity falling to 44 per cent and no religion rising to 39 per cent.

They sounded like a whole lot of executives and apologists for the tobacco industry hiding the truth with propaganda, fuzzing the facts to deny that lung cancer was the inevitable consequence of the product. Except this time, it was child abuse and abuse of authority, not lung cancer.

Labor’s Senate danger

Labor and the nation would have been better off with a hung Parliament and minority government. That way, Labor would have been saved from itself.

Last week’s unilateral decision to cut the advisory staff of independents and minor parties from four to one, is an example of a decision a minority government would not have made.

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